A £1,500 watch being launched into space is forecast to land near Cambridge.

The Seiko Astron Space watch is being sent into the stratosphere on Thursday (July 20) and is currently expected to land in the vicinity of the city based on current weather predictions. It will be free for the finder to keep.

Early estimates indicated the watch would be landing near Doncaster but in a change in the winds, due to a storm expected on Wednesday, has now placed the predicted landing near Cambridge.

The watch is being propelled into the skies by Jura Watches, part of C W Sellors Fine Jewellery based in Derbyshire, via a helium filled balloon.

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A series of cameras will be attached to the payload filming the journey, capturing the curvature of the Earth, before the balloon bursts and the payload slowly falls back to Earth aided by a parachute.

Once the payload has landed, members of the public are being invited to hunt for the package, with the finder being able to claim the Seiko watch as a prize.

The Seiko Astron Space Watch will plummeting back to Earth after it's expedition in Space

The project, which takes flight on Space Exploration Day, has been sponsored by Seiko.

It will launch from Carsington Water, Derbyshire, where C W Sellors has plans to build a new ‘jewellery design centre of excellence’ visitor attraction in the near future.

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Steve Ashby, one of the project organisers at Jura Watches, said: “This is without a doubt one of the most exciting projects I have ever worked on, but one that’s not without meticulous planning.

Below we have included a map of where the watch is calculated to land, so if you live in the city centre or its surrounding areas, keep your eyes peeled.

The watch is currently predicted to land in the Cambridgeshire area

“Based on our current data, it looks like wind conditions on the day will land the watch somewhere around the Cambridge area, so people should be on the lookout.

“We are working closely with professionals who will be overseeing the project to make sure everything from the launch to the landing goes to plan.”

The project is being overseen by Sent Into Space, a company which specialises in space launches.

Chris Rose, director of Sent Into Space, said: “The commonly accepted gateway to near space is the Armstrong Line at 19km, this is the point at which you would need a pressurised Space Suit to survive or your blood would quite literally boil in your body - and we are aiming to reach altitudes far beyond that.

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“Temperatures will plunge to lower than minus 60 Degrees Celsius, pressure will drop to almost zero and the watch will experience significant accelerations and speeds over 200 miles per hour on its re-entry through the atmosphere as it returns to Earth.”

David Harnby, director of sales and marketing at Seiko, said: “Orbiting 20,000 km above the surface of the Earth are the GPS satellites that help us run our lives and to which every Seiko Astron GPS Solar watch connects.

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“To celebrate this incredible technology we thought it would be exciting to see how close we could take an Astron watch to these satellites."

The watch is being launched on Thursday

Members of the public are also encouraged to get involved with the launch by entering one or more of the competitions linked to the event, where you can guess the distance travelled, the time between launch and landing, and the maximum altitude reached to win a range of prizes.